The Intel Core2 Duo E6550 is nearly six years old, the equivalent of around 3 processor lifetimes. This great grand daddy of a processor has been included in the group test as a reference. Intel's Core2 Duo range were hugely successful processors and shipped in over 20 different flavours. In terms of real world performance, with a Passmark-S score of 712 points, the E6550 is less than half as fast as the top of the range i7-3770K Ivy Bridge processor. In recent years emphasis has shifted towards server orientated workloads and on that front the i7-3770K offers over six times more processing throughput. [Feb '12CPUPro]

AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 is one of five new processors based on the latest Zen 2 7nm microarchitecture. This 6-core, 12-threaded processor is priced at $199 USD and succeeds the Zen+ Ryzen 5 2600 improving upon it by 18% in terms of average effective speed and 12% in terms of overclocked performance. The 3600's base / boost clocks of 3.6 / 4.2 GHz match the previous gen hex-core Ryzen 5 2600X and therefore indicate an 11% clock for clock (IPC) improvement over the previous generation. The Ryzen 5 3600 is in competition with Intel’s hex-core i5-9600K. AMD continues to push the multi-core performance envelope: benchmarks show that the 3600 has a 27% overclocked 64-core advantage over the 9600K but that the i5-9600K leads by 14% on single, quad and hex core workloads which translates to 14% higher fps for gamers. Additionally, the 3600's memory controller, although significantly improved over previous Ryzen iterations, still has limited bandwidth and high latency which can impact gaming. The Ryzen 3000 processors all include coolers and although they will be launched alongside the new mainstream X570 chipset (which is PCIe 4.0 enabled), they are backwards compatible with 400 and even the 300 series motherboards. At $198 USD, the 3600 offers reasonable value for workstation users. [Jun '19CPUPro]

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We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical gamers and desktop users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating which is geared towards gamers. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]

Welcome to our freeware PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best upgrades.